Snatcher’s Original Title Was Changed Due To A Mahjong Game, Says Kojima

Metal Gear Solid creator, Hideo Kojima, was in a talkative mood earlier, and decided to tweet some of his thoughts on the Snatcher and Policenauts games. His tweets regarding the two titles follow below:

It’s been 24 years from “SNATCHER” on msx2/pc-88 version and 20 years from “SNATCHER” on PC engine!

When registering trademark for “SNATCHER”, I had to explain to our legal what “Cyber Punk” of “Cyber Punk Adventure” means. People weren’t so familiar with “cyber punk back then so I had to explain again and again in the phine [sic – we think he meant “phone”] that made me exhausted.

Originally I named “JUNKER” for “SNATCHER”. But had to change because there’s a similar title in Mahjong game. I wanted to avoid naming the enemy name as I named “METAL GEAR” already thou. Also thought of “NEW ORDER”.

For “POLICENAUTS”, I initially named “Cinematic virtual reality” as a genre name. When I check the trademark back in 1990, there’s none registered so I left it out for a while but found 4 years later that this was registered by someone else. That’s why it doesn’t carry the genre name.

The original title for “POLICENAUTS” was “BEYOND” as both story and theme was “BEYOND” but couldn’t register. Ended up w “POLICENAUTS”.

Kojima also tweeted that, unfortunately, he will not be at the upcoming Gamescom convention in Cologne. “It was hard decision,” Kojima tweets. “Now I’m writing the answers to the questions from the media that I was going to have a panel interview in 25th anniversary event. This Q&A will be up on the net.”